5200 Rumor Mill

Programmed by John Seghers in response to the 7800 version of Asteroids. John wanted to show that the 5200 was capable of doing rotating asteroids as well as the 7800 was. A single unplayable demo is all that was done on this project.

- A -

Arabian

Port of the 1983 Atari Coin-op. Arabian was originally supposed to be programmed by Landon Dyer, but he passed and decided to do Super Pac-Man instead. According to Landon someone else was assigned to do the programming for this game, so it was in development. It is unknown how far along the game made it before being cancelled.

- E -

E.T.

Programmed by John Seghers for Atari. This version of E.T. was to be (thankfully) completely different than the 2600 version. Gameplay would have included E.T. running away from FBI agents in the woods, among other things. John remembers saving his work for this game on some development disks, but to date has be unable to locate them.

Elevator Action

Programmed by Joe Copson for Atari. Based on the 1983 Taito Coin-op, this game supposedly nearly complete before being cancelled. It is unknown if the game still exists, but it is widely believed that it was only saved to development disks and not burned to EPROMs.

- G -

Garfield

Programmed by Judy Bogart with help from Landon Dyer. This game was an action title based on the comic strip Garfield. In this game Garfield would have to pick up plates of lasagna while avoiding mice that would try to trip him. As Garfield collected more lasagna it would form a tower that would slowly sway back and forth. The player would have to keep the tower from falling over while moving around the screen.

Coding for this game was done, but it is not known how far the game had progressed. Landon Dyer recently commented on the 'lasagna tower' physics working properly, so the game must have been fairly far along.

- M -

Ms. Pac-Man (Puffer Version)

This was a modified version of Ms. Pac-Man that used the Puffer exercise bike controller. See the Tumbleweeds page for more detail on the Puffer. According to Jim Leiterman (who worked on the Puffer project), the Puffer was ill-suited for this type of game and this prototype was never meant to be released.

- P -

Pole Position (Puffer Version)

This was a modified version of Pole Position that used the Puffer exercise bike controller. See the Tumbleweeds page for more detail on the Puffer. It is unknown if Atari was seriously considering releasing this version, or if it was just a demonstration of the kind of games the Puffer was suited for.

- S -

Scraper Caper

Developed by Big Five Software. Scraper Caper was to be the second game in the Bounty Bob series, but was ultimately cancelled and replaced by Bounty Bob Strikes Back.

In Scraper Caper Bounty Bob would have switched careers from Mountie to Fire Fighter, and battle Yukon Yohan in the big city. Two different versions of Scraper Caper were actually programmed. According to Bill Houge in the first version "The game started outside a tall building on fire. A hysterical woman would flag down Bob and give him instructions for going up to her apartment to save something valuable. Bob would salute and then he'd be under your control. You'd go in the automatic door at the base of the building and start exploring." This version was abandoned because the concept didn't seem to pan out as well as Bill had hoped.

The second version was far more interesting sounding. In this version Bounty Bob was hopping around on three-dimensional framework with angry fireballs after him. This version actually got much farther before also being cancelled due to the concept no working as well as Bill had hoped. Later Bill admitted that he had set his standards too high and that both games should have been released.

Sadly it is believed that both versions of Scraper Caper are lost to the ravages of time.

Solar Fox

Developed by MicroGraphic Image for CBS Electronics. Ex-Apollo programmer Ban Tran programmed a version of Solar Fox for the Atari 5200 SuperSystem and 8-bit line of computers. The game was shown in a 1983 CES press kit and was scheduled for an October '83 release. It was supposedly completed and was nearly arcade perfect, but was never released due to the video game crash and subsequent departure of CBS from the video game market.